TheWatShot

I'm looking forward to the end of this game for two reasons: 1) it will be over, and 2) I can take my next shot of DayQuil to fight off this ridiculous cold I've had since Christmas Eve.

Mike Woodson coached teams are the worst I've ever seen at any level when it comes to finishing on fast breaks.

Still a bad look, but I wouldn't blame him. Not like there'd be any consequences.

Apparently ESPN thought we were playing at Winthrop.

My guess is "something else," but they'll probably say it's an undisclosed injury of some sort.

42-23 at the half. Been battling a nasty cold the last few days. Amazing what a remedy real basketball can be.

12 assists on 14 made baskets. Pretty strong showing so far.

Winning coaches typically don't plan on losing and sucking for multiple seasons. It's why they're winning coaches. A winning coach gets right to work and has that car fixed up in no time. Other coaches complain about it, make excuses and blame the car's previous ownership. You can probably guess which ones our last three coaches more closely resemble.

But that would mean we gave him 5 years instead of just 4...just think of the optics! Everyone will respect us for being so patient, and the pool of candidates will be so much better because they'll have peace of mind that we'll give them all the time in the world to slowly kill the program and any remaining support it has. Who wouldn't want that?

We were #15 preseason. That would usually mean an expectation of Sweet 16 or better. Something tells me the donors didn't give Woodson all that money just to go 11-9 and sneak in.

I have a feeling the raise might have been Dolson's way of pacifying Buckner, who could have easily been pushing for an extension after that electrifying 23-win season.

If it does, then you're targeting the wrong coaches.

Figured it was obvious this would be his last year when he wasn't given an extension. But I guess narratives and vendettas are more fun for some people.

It must really suck for Buckner to realize that his boy has literally nothing going for him these days and everyone knows it. I wonder what's going through his mind when stuff like this reaches him (assuming it does)? I'm picturing the dog sitting in the room full of flames thinking everything is fine.

90-55 is the final. Wisconsin at home Saturday afternoon. They're actually getting votes in the coaches' poll. Doesn't look like their schedule has been too difficult, but they did beat Butler.

What would need to happen for Striplin to start over Meister? We need better starts to games when we start playing Big Ten teams.

Bring on the articles and rage tweets about how Tennessee and SMU didn't deserve to be in the CFP. Oh wait, they're not Indiana, so it's OK for them to get blown out on a big stage.

Purdue scored 30 points in the last 7 minutes and still lost by 18.

We also opened the season with Chattanooga in 2007-08.

Auburn is absolutely fantastic. I could easily see them winning it all. If Pearl ever coached here and had anything close to this, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. They just had a kid diving out of bounds to save a loose ball...up by 29. Defensively, they've wrecked just about everything Purdue has tried to run. 5+ minutes without a point for the Boilers, guys are leaving their feet with nowhere to go, just looking broken. And Purdue has a top 10 Kenpom offense. 72-39 now, lol.

Also too much enjoyment from seeing Fletcher Loyer look like a grumpy elf slamming the ball down in frustration after the vastly superior athlete guarding him locked him up and forced him to drag his pivot foot.

I get way more enjoyment than I should from watching Braden Smith try to shake and bake against a vastly superior athlete, getting stripped, and watching the opponent get a highlight reel dunk in transition.

Also, I wonder how many UNC fans will be trilling "you can't fire him, he just won the conference a year ago! who will want to come here then?" My guess is, not many of them. The actual blue-blood fans leave that hand-wringing to tortured souls like us.

Going to be really interesting to see how the media treats them compared to us. I imagine a lot of fawning over UNC and what a great job opportunity that's going to be for somebody, and a lot of "poor Mike Woodson, IU is unrealistic, they don't treat their coaches well, etc."

Back in the offseason, I predicted that by the end of December, they'd have a better record than us in spite of having a tougher schedule. Not feeling as confident in that prediction now, but December's not over yet.